Carbon dioxide now more than 50% higher than pre-industrial levels

Re:Carbon dioxide now more than 50% higher than pre-industri... by TomSwirly on Monday June 06, 2022 @10:31AM (#31640989)

Here's a graph of energy consumption by source: https://ourworldindata.org/global-energy-200-years

Renewable sources are growing exponentially but carbon emitting sources continue to grow exponentially as well, simply somewhat slower.

It seems wildly, unreasonably optimistic to look at that graph and imagine most of that majority at the bottom suddenly vanishing within ten years.

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Re:Carbon dioxide now more than 50% higher than pre-industri... by ben_w on Monday June 06, 2022 @11:18AM (#31641608)

To me, that looks like a sigmoid that has passed its peak. But, assuming it’s an exponential, it doubled between 1975 and 2015 (i.e. 40 years).

Here’s some graphs for PV: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Growth_of_photovoltaics

PV is doubling every 3 to 3.5 years.

3 doublings of PV at that rate gets us to about 9-10 TW peak. I don’t know the actual average global capacity factor, but I do know the current global electricity usage is only about 3 TW: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_electrici...

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